Translated into 70 languages, Thor Heyerdahl's account of his 1947 expedition across the Pacific on a balsa raft has captivated the imagination of generations after generations of dreamers—and for very good reasons. "Kon Tiki" is an excellent book: evocative, inspiring, quite funny at times, but also heart-felt and informational, all outstanding qualities that will shine even more in its sequel, "Aku-Aku."
Unfortunately, the directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg pay such obvious lip service to Hollywood conventions (each character-based scene in the movie has been shot both in English, and in Norwegian in a grossly obvious attempt to cater to a wider audience). More to the point is the pathetic effort to inject a modicum of conventional drama into one of the central tenets of the book: the well-balanced micro-universe that the 7-crew members succeeded to create on their minuscule raft. The directors chose to strip all characters of their personality, except for Heyerdahl himself (Pål Sverre Valheim Hagen) whom they endow with a determination suspiciously close to religious fanaticism, and by turning Herman Watzinger's character (Anders Baasmo Christiansen) into a wuss. Aside from Watzinger's daughter who rightly complained about her father's misrepresentation, Heyerdahl himself must be turning over in his grave: The original photographs of Watzinger reveal a person much different from the doughy, lumpy, doubting sissy who manages to sneak some metal wire aboard the primitive raft (heavy-handed irony here) amongst his personal belongings, hoping to replace the failing ropes under way. In reality, Watzinger was Heyerdahl's first and foremost 'convert,' showing so much faith and enthusiasm in the project that he accompanied him all the way to the jungles of Ecuador in search of balsa trunks for the raft. The screenplay concocted by Petter Skavlan and Allan Scott (as a "consultant," the latter probably deserves a greater part of the blame) replaces this episode with a much earlier one (Heyerdahl and his wife in the Marquesas) for the evident reason and excuse to include at least one female character in the movie, lest the audience—God forbid!—should feel and resent the lack. Not altogether incidentally, the back cover of the DVD displays the happy couple romantically awash in tropical waters.
The directors' excuse for altering the facts that both the original book and the 1950 documentary are grounded in, is shameless in its implied arrogance: the book lacks any dramatic tensions, they claim, so they had to manufacture some. That is why the first half of the expedition unfurls under a sense of cheap suspense: is the raft going to drift towards "the Maelstrom of the Galapagos" (huh?!) Are the ropes going to hold the balsa trunks together? Will the captain find himself in a position to literally sink or swim, like he failed to earlier on, as a boy? A cursory review of the book will reveal a trove of opportunities for suspense that the directors blithely ignored: the raft sails so closely to the first Polynesian island that several natives are able to reach them by canoe. Knut returns to the shore with them, hoping to get more paddling help, and almost remains stranded behind, on the island. Or: the instance when the cooking gear catches fire, threatening to burn the whole hut down. Or: the underwater efforts to tighten the ropes while en route. Or: the quandary they find themselves in, upon landing, after managing to get their soaked radio going: once they establish radio contact, the ham operator half a world away refuses to believe that they are the castaways they claim to be. Or: the operation they perform on a native boy, with the help of a doctor who directs them through the Morse code, and that of the "miraculous" antibiotics that they had brought along on their primitive raft. Even Watzinger's success in manufacturing ice on the raft for film-developing purposes (his redeeming act as a refrigerators salesman) is casually brushed aside. Rather than rely on the richness of the book, the directors took the easiest way out. The result may be satisfactory, even uplifting for some viewers who expect nothing past colorful entertainment, but it does a tremendous disservice both to the book and, more importantly, to Heyerdahl's global accomplishment. And, in absence of the book that has brought under its spell millions of readers, the movie can hardly stay afloat on its own terms.
Unfortunately, the directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg pay such obvious lip service to Hollywood conventions (each character-based scene in the movie has been shot both in English, and in Norwegian in a grossly obvious attempt to cater to a wider audience). More to the point is the pathetic effort to inject a modicum of conventional drama into one of the central tenets of the book: the well-balanced micro-universe that the 7-crew members succeeded to create on their minuscule raft. The directors chose to strip all characters of their personality, except for Heyerdahl himself (Pål Sverre Valheim Hagen) whom they endow with a determination suspiciously close to religious fanaticism, and by turning Herman Watzinger's character (Anders Baasmo Christiansen) into a wuss. Aside from Watzinger's daughter who rightly complained about her father's misrepresentation, Heyerdahl himself must be turning over in his grave: The original photographs of Watzinger reveal a person much different from the doughy, lumpy, doubting sissy who manages to sneak some metal wire aboard the primitive raft (heavy-handed irony here) amongst his personal belongings, hoping to replace the failing ropes under way. In reality, Watzinger was Heyerdahl's first and foremost 'convert,' showing so much faith and enthusiasm in the project that he accompanied him all the way to the jungles of Ecuador in search of balsa trunks for the raft. The screenplay concocted by Petter Skavlan and Allan Scott (as a "consultant," the latter probably deserves a greater part of the blame) replaces this episode with a much earlier one (Heyerdahl and his wife in the Marquesas) for the evident reason and excuse to include at least one female character in the movie, lest the audience—God forbid!—should feel and resent the lack. Not altogether incidentally, the back cover of the DVD displays the happy couple romantically awash in tropical waters.
The directors' excuse for altering the facts that both the original book and the 1950 documentary are grounded in, is shameless in its implied arrogance: the book lacks any dramatic tensions, they claim, so they had to manufacture some. That is why the first half of the expedition unfurls under a sense of cheap suspense: is the raft going to drift towards "the Maelstrom of the Galapagos" (huh?!) Are the ropes going to hold the balsa trunks together? Will the captain find himself in a position to literally sink or swim, like he failed to earlier on, as a boy? A cursory review of the book will reveal a trove of opportunities for suspense that the directors blithely ignored: the raft sails so closely to the first Polynesian island that several natives are able to reach them by canoe. Knut returns to the shore with them, hoping to get more paddling help, and almost remains stranded behind, on the island. Or: the instance when the cooking gear catches fire, threatening to burn the whole hut down. Or: the underwater efforts to tighten the ropes while en route. Or: the quandary they find themselves in, upon landing, after managing to get their soaked radio going: once they establish radio contact, the ham operator half a world away refuses to believe that they are the castaways they claim to be. Or: the operation they perform on a native boy, with the help of a doctor who directs them through the Morse code, and that of the "miraculous" antibiotics that they had brought along on their primitive raft. Even Watzinger's success in manufacturing ice on the raft for film-developing purposes (his redeeming act as a refrigerators salesman) is casually brushed aside. Rather than rely on the richness of the book, the directors took the easiest way out. The result may be satisfactory, even uplifting for some viewers who expect nothing past colorful entertainment, but it does a tremendous disservice both to the book and, more importantly, to Heyerdahl's global accomplishment. And, in absence of the book that has brought under its spell millions of readers, the movie can hardly stay afloat on its own terms.